The Return
by starboarder
Summary: When the prospect of rebuilding Thornfield arises 3 years into their marriage, Jane and Edward find themselves overwhelmed by the past. To satisfy my desire to see the JR relationship from an outsider's perspect, I've introduced an original character.
1. Prelude to a Return

When the drawing room door opened in the middle of his meeting, Roger Morris lifted his glass of brandy and turned toward the source of the interruption with an undisturbed air of nonchalance. That the source of the interruption would be a smiling, rosy-cheeked girl entering with a vase full of flowers, and that his tumbler would choose that moment to miss his mouth and gauchely empty its contents into his lap, were two circumstances he hadn't counted on. But it was not the first time he'd made a fool of himself, nor would it be the last.

It wasn't without a certain, uncharacteristic timidity that the young estate agent had rapped thrice upon the door of the manor house only minutes before his unfortunate mishap. He had been corresponding with the owner for over two years – ever since he had taken over the position of steward from his father – but in that time he had visited the house on only one occasion, and never glimpsed the man, though he had heard enough gossip about him rather to rouse and sustain than quell his curiosity. Morris Senior had been steward for the Rochester family since the present Mr. Rochester was a boy and had managed the family's two English estates at Thornfield and Ferndean for most of his life. But his last year of employment had seen two changes – the destruction of the house at Thornfield and a sudden onset of ill-health that had obliged him to transfer the stewardship to Morris Junior. With the transfer of employment came also the transfer of information about his employer. From his father, Roger Morris learned that Mr. Edward Rochester, the last surviving member of an old family, had nearly met his end along with the house, had been blinded and badly injured, and had relocated to the remote property of Ferndean to convalesce. An ambitious young man and the first in his family to receive a university education, Morris had been eager to demonstrate his ability and had paid a call upon his employer at the end of autumn two years previous to inquire about the management of the property now that the house was gone. He had been unceremoniously received by the servant, and after waiting over half an hour in the dark, fireless drawing room, had been informed that the master of the house could not receive him and would he please send his inquiries through the post. Disappointed and discouraged by this cold welcome, he'd returned home, fully expecting to receive shortly a letter informing him that his services would no longer be needed by the Rochester family. No such letter came.

As he waited in the foyer while the servant announced him, Morris wondered at the reason for his sudden summons. There had been half a year's silence from the master of Ferndean following his ill-fated first visit. Then, quite suddenly, had come a letter – in a woman's hand – thanking him for his continued service and requesting a thorough account of the transactions with Thornfield's tenants. Rochester's signature – scrawled and nearly illegible – appeared at the bottom. It was not until some weeks later that Morris and his father learned that Rochester had been recently married.

All the talk he had heard, and even his own surmises – briefly, that his employer was a man of profound eccentricity, but a just and liberal paymaster – could not have prepared him for meeting the man in person. As he stood fidgeting with his hat, the door to the drawing room opened and a man stepped forward. At the sight of Morris he paused, squinted, then continued toward him, extending his hand.

"Mr. Morris, I believe?"

"Yes, sir."

"I knew you immediately. You resemble your father."

"So I am told, sir, thank you, sir."

The man was imposing, but neither from height nor girth, for he was not particularly tall nor was he remotely corpulent. It was not even his ravaged face that struck one: rugged to begin with, and now marred additionally by a scar – well-healed, but still a livid mark in his otherwise swarthy complexion – stretching from his forehead to his cheekbone and cutting through the left eyebrow. The eye was obviously sightless, the lid capable of opening only a fraction. But the other eye, the right eye, was clear, dark and piercingly direct in its gaze. It was an eye that gave the impression of being able to see through walls. At the moment it was trained on Morris, watching as he took in the full impression of his host's face, his contradictorily robust and athletic frame, the startling emptiness of his left-hand cuff, where his arm ended abruptly at the wrist. No, it was not the clearly painful injuries the man had sustained that impressed Morris, but his apparent obliviousness toward his appearance – or perhaps his pride in spite of it. He exuded all the self-assertion and confidence of a fully-able man in his prime, and his defiant gaze seemed to dare anyone to venture otherwise. He was a man who commanded, rather than demanded, respect.

"Come in." He gestured to the drawing room. Morris followed him in.

"Will you have a brandy?"

"Thank you, sir, yes."

Rochester went to a side table where a decanter and glasses stood ready and busied about pouring first for Morris, then himself. Morris noticed that he leaned very close while pouring – no doubt to better see the quantity of spirits with which he was filling the glasses.

Morris accepted the drink and the seat offered him, and while he nursed the brandy he looked around him at the room – now quite transformed from the dreary space he'd been made to wait in on his last visit.

"If I may say, sir, it is a very fine room. I cannot recall the presence of these pleasing arrangements when last I was here."

"They are all my wife's doing, I had no part in them." Rochester spoke carelessly, gesturing with a sweep of his hand meant, Morris assumed, to indicate the tasteful yet simple furnishings, the pictures on the walls, the abundance of candles all around the room. But a certain glimmer – was it pride? – in his expression belied his apparent unconcern.

"Ah, yes," Morris said, silently cursing himself. He had forgotten to inquire after the wife, idiot that he was. "Please convey my compliments to Mrs. Rochester."

"I shall. The improvements of these rooms and the upstairs chambers have been her special project. It will please her to hear of your approval." Rochester downed his brandy, set his glass down with a sharp clink, and turned his falcon eye to the young man.

"Now Morris, I asked you here for a particular reason. I understand that you have fully taken over the stewardship of Thornfield from your father."

"You understand correctly, sir."

"As you are no doubt aware, I have not given much thought to the property over the past two years, other concerns have all but driven it from my mind. Now, however, I feel I ought – indeed, I should like – to reassume my responsibility. It has come to my attention that the property in its current state may be considered by some to be a – waste of good land."

"You are thinking of rebuilding, sir?"

"Perhaps, but before I can seriously consider such an enterprise I must know better the condition of the grounds, how much can be salvaged from the remains of the structure, and so forth. Do you follow?"

"Yes, sir."

It was at this point in the conversation that the door opened. The girl sashayed into the room like a wood-sprite, careless and free. There was something rather extraordinary about her voice as well – it was lower that most, but sweet and melodic and at this moment cut through with an undercurrent of happy excitement.

"Look at what I found – growing just by our tree stump! Aren't they lovely?" Then she noticed Morris.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!"

"Hello my dear," Rochester said, smiling, but whether it was at this radiant girl or at Morris' soaked shirtfront, Morris didn't know.

"Darling, this is Mr. Morris. Morris, my wife, Jane."

Wife! This slim, girlish creature his wife! Morris had imagined a demure matron of thirty – quiet, plain and rather plump – the sort of woman a man like Rochester might bend easily to his will. He saw now he couldn't have been farther off the mark had he made a deliberate effort.

As she set down the vase and he rose awkwardly to his feet to shake her hand, he could not help noticing how young she seemed – why, she must be younger than he was, and yet married to such a man! Rochester could crush a tiny thing like her if he chose; she was as a bird to his bear. Yet even Morris had not been fool enough to miss the look of mutual affection that had passed between them, the joy with which she'd entered the room to bring flowers to her husband, believing him alone. This was clearly no intimidated, shrinking violet. And youthful as she was, Mrs. Rochester met his gaze evenly, shook his hand with a firm yet graceful ease, and spoke the required "How do you do, Mr. Morris?" with the calm, steady tone of a grown woman. Morris wondered if there were already children, only to find himself blushing at the thought. He was painfully aware of his soiled shirt and mud-caked boots and he felt clumsy and uncouth.

"Morris is here to discuss estate business. Would you care to join us?" Mrs. Rochester paused, appeared to consider her husband's invitation, rather to Morris' astonishment. Estate business was of no concern to a lady, at least in his experience, but the warmth in his employer's voice told him the offer had indeed been genuine. He unconsciously chewed at his lower lip. If that sprite were to sit with them while they discussed Thornfield's future, he hardly knew whether he'd be able to keep his composure. To his relief, she declined, murmuring something about garden work before excusing herself with a sweet smile – directed at her husband – and a cordial nod – directed at him.

Rochester carried on as if the interruption were nothing, with only the lingering color in his face – which had sprang into animation with his wife's brief appearance – as testimony to its having ever occurred. Meanwhile Morris, still flustered, found himself only half listening to his employer's suggestions of going over the grounds together, his mind's eye still captivated by that – there was no other word for it – _enchanting_ creature.

That afternoon, as he rode out of the wood and hit the road to Millcote at a gallop, all he could think of was his employer's young wife – her light step, her smile, her grace, the utter sincerity in her gaze as she calmly shook his hand. And Rochester was contemplating transplanting that youthful spirit to the death-hush of Thornfield Hall! He pictured Thornfield – the wrecked, soot-blackened stones, now the retreat of rooks and owls, gloomy on all but the brightest days – a sight that cast an unsettling air on the whole vicinity. Morris would as soon attempt to convince a happy little songbird to live out the rest of its life in a dark cave as picture Mrs. Rochester as mistress of that forsaken place.

It was not his station to dissuade his employer from any plans he saw fit to make pertaining to the reconstruction of the house unless they were firmly grounded in real impracticalities. Yet he hoped that their walk which was to take place on the morrow would reveal to Rochester what Morris could not tell him in words: that the hall had burned for a reason, and to defy whatever force had determined this fate by building another on its ashes was ill-advised, even sacrilegious. Morris was not a particularly superstitious man. He did not believe, for instance, the popular local rumors that the hall was cursed. But he had a sense for atmosphere – for ambience; and he did not see wisdom in desecrating the churchyard-tranquility of Thornfield with the clamor of the architects' and masons' and carpenters' trades. Some things were simply better left undisturbed.

In his mind, Mrs. Rochester was something like a heroine in a fairy tale: circumstances had presented her with a forbidden door of sorts which, if opened, threatened to lead downward into a darkness from which, he feared, there might be no return.


	2. The Return Part 1

They approached Thornfield by a new road. As the carriage reached the top of the hill, they sat in silence, eyes fixed to the window, all but holding their breath for the moment that was coming. The vehicle gained the summit; all lay stretched out before them, green fields and white winding lanes and the old hall itself, its crumbling, ruined walls a strangely peaceful sight in the late summer sun.

Jane had not anticipated being so moved by this first sight of the hall. There was nothing in it to startle or distress her – she had walked among the ruins already, already felt the pangs of terror for the fate of its occupants, already learned of the fury and the tragedy behind the great structure's demise. All that had happened over two years ago – a more than ample interval in which to accustom herself to the idea of the hall's destruction, to gently but firmly close the door on that chapter of her life, to accept that those days were gone and over. Why should Thornfield be anything to her now, when she had a beloved home to call her own, when the owner was at this moment sitting beside her, fingers laced through hers?

The carriage began its descent toward Thornfield, and she could see, beyond the house, the road to Millcote and, traveling in the opposite direction, the junction where she'd caught the coach to Whitcross on the morning of her flights all those years ago. At the glimpse of that white gravel way, the memory of that sorrow snatched at her heart and she squeezed her husband's hand the harder, verifying his presence by her. Much had changed since that flight, and she prided herself in her success at adjusting to these changes, in rising to meet each new challenge without fearful hesitation or backward glances, but there were some troubles even she could not bridge, some sorrows even she could never completely forget. As they rolled ever closer to Thornfield, she half-fancied she could see a tiny, black-clad figure waiting at the junction, leaning on the mile-post, her grief-weakened limbs scarcely able to support her. Jane wished she could go to her, comfort her, tell her to stay strong, to stay resolute. She wished she could reassure her that everything would be well. She longed to tell her what she knew now: that she would see the man she loved – the man her heart bled for – one day again, that she would again feel the bliss of his love, and that their reunion would be for always.

At the main gate, the carriage stopped for them to alight. Edward climbed out first, then offered his hand to her. The coachman departed with the instructions to return for them in two hours. They were left alone.

But for the distant cries of birds and the fading clatter of the retreating carriage, it was still as a church. No breeze blew.

At first he only stared; stared and stared at the blackened walls as though he could scarcely comprehend what he was seeing. Jane silently upbraided herself for not having had the sense to warn him. He had never yet observed the full extent of the damage, his injuries having occurred while he was still _inside_ the building. She opened her mouth to speak some words of comfort – however trite – but then he murmured unexpectedly,

"I had not imagined that so much would yet stand. I had not thought to find any more than a pile of stone."

What could she respond to such a remark? She did not know whether the reality of the view elevated his hopes by not conforming to his preconceived vision of total destruction, or depressed them by remaining in such as state as allowed him to see glimpses of the old house – and thereby to comprehend the more acutely what would never be again.

With the hushed steps of travelers approaching a revered Classical ruin, they proceeded up the drive arm in arm. When they'd come within feet of where the main door had once stood, Edward stopped, compelling her, holding his arm, to stop too. He turned his gaze to the ground.

"Here," he said quietly, half to himself. "It was here, I'm sure of it." There was no stain, no vestige of gore on the pavement at his feet, but he looked up, as though expecting a different confirmation – as though expecting to see the battlements, still intact, and a figure upon them, nightgown billowing in the wind, silhouetted by the flames behind her.

"Edward – ," She spoke his name, forced him to turn to her, as if the word and the sound of her voice uttering it would drag him away from that abyss-edge of memory. He blinked at her like one waking from a dream. And then he smiled – rather ruefully, but a smile nonetheless. He offered no apology, and her look asked for none. They walked on.

Morris arrived a half hour later, the clatter of horse hooves on the gravel announcing his presence long before the young man himself came into view. While he and Edward remained by the house to discuss rebuilding prospects, she wandered alone into the orchard.

The garden had not fallen into complete neglect, as she had feared, but the flowers grew  
more tangled and free than she remembered, and the tree-branches hung down low and lush over the path. In the stillness of the afternoon, and the additional tranquility that hung over this verdant haunt in the wake of total human abandonment, she was put in mind of what she'd read of the hanging gardens of Babylon. She wondered if perhaps Nebuchadnezzar – that great destroyer and conqueror - had walked thus, in the gardens he had constructed for his wife, letting the peaceful sight of the bright blooms and graceful, sweeping green boughs erase from his mind so much cruelty and pain.

She passed an arbor, nearly overgrown with hanging ivy and late roses, and stopped her slow ramble to sit in its rustic seat. How still everything was! So still that when the words came, unbidden, they echoed in her mind as clearly and succinctly as when she had first heard them.

_Sit here, there is room enough for two. Oh, you don't hesitate to take a seat by my side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane? _

He had bidden her, as his friend, to stay with him, to listen while he put to her the case of his past. Shrouded it had been, then, in vague allusions, many of which puzzled her, but there had been no vagueness about the urgency in his tale, or the utter faith he placed in her opinion by thus soliciting her advice toward his plan for regeneration. _My little friend_. The memory of the words – and the gentleness in his voice when he had pronounced them on that quiet morning – was still enough to send warmth through her veins. She had since been called by many, infinitely dearer terms, but in those days that small endearment was everything to her. In those days she had wanted nothing more than to be his friend, to be the one he came to for help, or to ease his mind of any burden. She had not dared to hope for more than friendship, and there had been days when even that bond seemed more than she was able to bear; when his kindness – so startling because she had lived without it for so long – was almost overwhelming. And yet he had tormented her so! Even that quiet morning – when they'd sat so close together on this very bench – had later been a cause for anguish as over and over she recalled his mentions of Miss Ingram, of his "lovely one" and his impending union with her. And she had been unable to condemn this subtle cruelty from him because of her love, her devotion, her conviction that her own foolishness – her own vulnerability to his honeyed barbs – was more to blame.

They had behaved imperfectly. They were imperfect beings, no less so now than then. And even now, from a distance of three years, she could not find it in her heart to reprove them. They had both been so uncertain of each other, so fearful of the other's indifference. Behind his provoking words, her meek obedience, behind a hundred meaningless politenesses and furtive glances, their hearts had trembled with longing, with desires – sincere and pure desires, but unvoiced and unpronounceable.

Those days were long over now.

She reached out and pulled from its stem one of the roses over her head; no one would miss it, and she so wanted something – something from this place. As she bent her head to inhale its fragrance, a light patter of feet on one of the paths made her pause. She rose swiftly and stood perfectly still, straining her ears for some approach or retreat. To the silence a single bird lent its trilling song, but the other sound did not repeat itself. Broken was the trance-like tranquility. She was roused. She pocketed the flower and moved on.

From the garden she strayed down the winding laurel walk, drawn toward the chestnut tree – that center of so many memories. The laurel grew high and dense, unpruned now for many seasons, and she followed the narrow path like a wanderer in a labyrinth following a slender thread. She knew the way out, she thought she knew the sight that would meet her at the end, but when she reached it she stopped, her limbs stunned into momentary paralysis. It was as though the thread she had so trusted in had but led her to a dead-end. She stood at the end of the walk and swallowed the sob that had risen in her throat. There was the sunken fence as before, there were the fields beyond, but nothing remained of the chestnut tree. It was gone.

She had herself foretold its fall. Those blackened, riven halves, grasping in last desperation at the sky, could never have survived the tempest-gusts of autumn or the frigid blasts of winter. And yet the sight of the quiet little mound where the grass had crept over and covered the stump of the once mighty tree stung her heart bitterly. She had been foolish, perhaps, to think she could escape the past so easily, but never until now had it been impressed upon her so strongly how much had been lost.

She walked slowly up to it, and stood where the small seat had once encircled the vanished trunk. She knew that an end came to all people and all things, just as all people and all things had beginnings. But why here – why to this place that they had loved? It was too soon, too sudden. She turned to look up toward Thornfield, now just so many tons of mortar and stone: an empty shell holding nothing but ashes.

It was not only a house that was gone, but an entire history, incinerated in a single blaze; centuries of lives, their memories extinguished now that portraits, mementoes, even trees were gone. What was left of them now but names engraved in stone in the churchyard yonder, some already too faded to read? So many endings. She thought of Edward, the last survivor of a proud, fierce family. Was this to be the end to his story – _their_ story – too? Was nothing to remain of their love but a quiet little mound, a few slabs of moss-covered granite? One day, would people stand before the spot and say, 'here is Edward Fairfax, the last descendent, an ill-treated second son never expected to partake of the family inheritance, never the subject of family hope or expectation or legacy. Here he lies, the last of his bloodline, under whose watch the ancestral seat was burnt to the ground,'? Would they say that, never knowing of _her_ Edward, lover of music and art, enraptured by natural beauty, his mother's joy, his father's burden; a half-blind, maimed, deeply passionate man whose great heart fell to a tiny woman?

So much loss.

It might have been the shock of this grave realization, this humble view, or it might have been the simple fact that she was weary after many hours' travel in the coach and then another walking about the grounds in the summer heat, but she felt herself growing increasingly lightheaded and dizzy. Her stomach churned with nausea. She sank down beside the mound, like a pagan mourner beside the tomb of an ancient monarch. Only this mound was too small to belong to a king. Perhaps a little child…

As she slowly lay down and rested her head on the soft grass, she wondered if she'd been taken with fever. Surely she could not be ill. Her head spun, and she closed her eyes.

_A cool breeze was rustling the leaves above her and blowing the loose wisps of hair falling about her face when she opened her eyes. She lay curled on a soft carpet of grass in a shaded bower, as though surrounded by some invisible fairy-circle of protection into which no dazzling beam could penetrate, for the foliage of the tree grew so dense that even the bright sunshine did not reach her. The breeze intensified, the leaves above rustle more urgently, responding to the wind's secrets with little whisperings and shivers. The swelling horse-chestnuts, still encased in their prickly green shells, trembled and swung on their branches, but it was yet too early for them to fall and pose a danger for her, resting beneath them. A sound – peculiar because unexpected – reached her ears; no whisper, no murmur, but a decisive childish chortle. She sat up and looked around her. She saw she was quite alone. Again came the giggle, most certainly a child's. A delighted, innocent sound, not in the least frightening, but where was it coming from? She looked above her. The laughter repeated and she froze as though transfixed by a siren call. She could see nothing of the maker among the tree's close-clustering foliage, impossibly dense, more like some jungle plant than an ordinary specimen of English flora._

"_Come down little one, let me see you," she called. On the next gust of breeze came the reply – light as the tinkle of a fountain, but wordless: only the happy laughter of a child, unseen and, to her, invisible._

_Jane!_

She woke to find herself in her husband's arms – Edward was kneeling at her side, clutching her anxiously.

"I'm sorry, Darling. I must have dozed off."

His relief was palpable. His hand trembled on her shoulder. "Are you alright? You lay so still…" He shuddered and kissed her. Cautiously she brought a hand to her forehead – it was cool and dry, and she felt she'd regained her equilibrium.

"I am alright now. Earlier I felt a little tired…" She did not compound it with any details. Mentions of her strange spell of faintness, or the stranger impressions made upon her by the solemn sight of the house, the missing tree, the eeriness of her dream, would only have caused him undue worry.

"Yes, you have had a long, fatiguing day. It was neglectful of me to leave you on your own – you ought to have returned to the inn and rested. Come, we'll return now. Can you walk to the gate?"

He was so protective of her, so gentle. She knew he was trying to make up for all the services she had rendered him over the past two years – trying to show her in these small attentions as well as in words how much he cared for her. She in truth felt completely refreshed, her strength restored, but she allowed him to help her rise, and she held tight to his arm as they walked slowly back to the gate where the carriage waited.


	3. The Return Part 2

They passed the rest of the afternoon and evening in relative tranquility, after the brief flurry of excitement that their arrival at the inn inspired: that the elusive master of Thornfield himself, and his wife, had chosen to grace the Rochester Arms with their presence was indeed a rare and gossip-worthy circumstance. After enduring a great deal of well-meaning but harassing attention, Jane and Edward at last found themselves in their small but tidy accommodations – the best the inn had to offer. They dined in their room by the fire, for the space had grown chilly with the approaching evening, and retired early. There had been no recurrence of her earlier faintness, and Jane, curled up on her side with her husband's body curved about hers to form two nesting crescent moons, fell quickly into slumber.

In the middle of the night she awoke in a panic, heart pounding, flesh quivering, mind reeling with the vision of her dream – an image so vivid she had it before her now, in the darkness of the inn room. She had seen the child.

Like her dream of the previous afternoon, there had been nothing threatening, nothing to portend tragedy or calamity, but the fact remained that she had dreamt twice in succession of a _child_, and this time she had seen its face. Edward was fast asleep beside her, his arm still slung over her, holding her even in slumber. She trembled at the thought of anything happening to him. They had been so happy – surely God would not be so cruel as to separate them now. But what _else_ could the dream signify?

She gently moved his arm and turned herself slowly on the bed to face him. He did not wake, but the movement seemed to trigger in her a sudden wave of sickness: the sickness she'd felt the day before by the chestnut tree. She closed her eyes and drew several deep breaths. It was nothing. She was overtired and feverish from her dream – that was all. If she only stopped thinking of it and cleared her mind, the nausea would leave her and she would be able to rest, she was certain of that. But she could not forget it.

She had been beneath the chestnut tree as before, and as before it had stood tall and strong, its leaves lush and dense. The same laughter had assailed her ears, and she had stood gazing up, trying to see the source. And then the laughter had sounded closer – not above, but behind her, and she had wheeled around and seen…

It was a little boy, no more than four or five years old, with flushed cheeks and thick dark hair that tumbled across his forehead in waves. The traces of a laugh still hung over his lips and he gazed up at her, his face full of delight. He had Edward's eyes.

In the morning the sickness was gone, but she had slept only fitfully in the hours following her dream and so she remained at the inn to nurse a headache while Edward went alone to consult once more with young Morris and pay a respectful visit to his ailing father. In the full light of day, her nighttime terrors seemed foolish, her superstitions the product of an over-stimulated brain – no doubt the natural result of revisiting a place so laced with memories. Her headache vanished quickly and after a strong cup of tea she was once more in full possession of her strength. She bathed her face with cold water from the basin, dressed in her light summer gown and then busied herself in packing the small trunk they'd brought. That task was shortly completed, but she did not expect Edward back for at least an hour and she soon grew restless. Donning her bonnet and a thin shawl, she went below, left a message with the innkeeper to send a man to the Morris residence to inform Mr. Rochester that his wife was gone on to the hall, and set off.

Walking the familiar path to Thornfield reinvigorated her. She felt the air in her lungs, the blood in her veins, and her limbs felt strong and alive. Her eyes met the trees, the grass underfoot, the flowers growing wild in the hedgerows with the fondness of old friends glimpsed after a long separation.

She could not spend her life jumping at phantoms, hiding from shadows. When she came in sight of the hall she skirted around to the field behind it and once more approached the site of the fallen chestnut tree. She stopped paces away and looked on the spot calmly, without alarm, without trouble of spirit. There was nothing to fear. The true horrors were already endured and were over. She could endure their vestiges, real or conjured.

She went up to the mound and, standing upon it, her head bent reverently to the earth, Jane closed her eyes and opened wide the door and let the memories wash over her.

Edward's voice brought her back.

"I thought perhaps I should find you at this place – and I have."

She opened her eyes and saw him standing there, looking at her as though he'd searched all the world over and at last happened upon the one most precious thing on its surface.

"You always do." He went up to her and looked at her closely – as closely as he was able.

"You are quite well? No more aching here?" He reached out and ran his fingers over her forehead, brushing the temple with his thumb, his touch feathery-light.

"No, it is gone."

"Good." He kissed her on the spot where his fingers had been, beside her left eye, where a blue vein showed beneath the milky-white skin.

"And your meeting with Mr. Morris?"

"It is over. He shall meet us here shortly to bid us farewell, but was obliged to remain behind for the moment, to see to his father."

"Is he very unwell?"

"Yes. I fear old Morris will not see another Spring."

"I'm sorry. I know you have known him long." She looked almost involuntarily up at Thornfield. "So many endings."

"Were we wrong to come back?" he asked. "Has it made you sad?"

"Yes… and no. I cannot tell. It has made me remember… so much. Surely that cannot be wrong? Surely it is better not to forget?"

"Were you in danger of forgetting?"

"I tried to."

"We both did."

"Has it made _you_ sad, Edward?" His gaze returned her searching one.

"Yes," he answered truthfully, "but not disconsolate. Thornfield was lost to me long ago. It is what remains that lacerates most deeply." He looked down at the soft grass at their feet. "This place… we loved this place, didn't we?"

"So dearly."

"There is such emptiness here, now. Such stillness. And to think, it was here; that you stood there – just there – and said to me that parting would be akin to death."

"You provoked me into saying it."

"I know."

"But I did not mean it any the less for all that."

"My little fire-spirit! How you glowed that night! Even the fateful lightning-bolt was no match for your innate brightness."

Then they sat down together by the mound of the fallen chestnut tree and talked – really talked – about the past. It had been so easy to ignore it, hidden away in their secluded home, cocooned in their own small world where they had spun, with tenderness and love – so much love – a soft but steadfast barricade against all reminders of what had been.

And they were so blessed in each other, so entirely each other's lives, that for a time there had simply seemed no space for other things, or thoughts. But inevitably – unrelentingly – time wore down all barriers, however lovingly constructed. Sometimes they came down all at once, like the dear chestnut tree, sometimes over slow years, but the end did come. And it had come now.

"We used to climb in this tree when we were boys – Rowland and I. It was his delight to tease me - dare me to climb higher than he had, but when I finally succeeded, climbed to the top, he wasn't there to see. I remember once when I was quite young, there was company in the house and I didn't wish to meet them, so I hid in the tree. Rowland was sent to fetch me inside. He made a show of looking and calling for me, but he returned without telling, though certainly he must have known the location of my retreat all along. He was not a bad brother to me in those days."

She so often forgot that Thornfield had been Edward's home long before it had been hers. That he had roamed its corridors, its grounds as a child, as well as in his willful, restless youth, long before it had become a prison to him.

"I wish – I wish I could have known it as you did." She spoke impetuously, knowing the wish was childish but unable to stop the words.

"The tree?"

"The tree, the garden, the house… I should have liked to have seen it as it was when you were young."

"It was fine, Jane. You can scarcely imagine how fine." He turned his eye wistfully in the direction of the house and squinted at the once splendid prospect. "I didn't appreciate it as I ought – but then children so seldom do." His gaze returned to her. "_You_ would have, though."

She thought of the lonely shrubbery walks at Gateshead, the bare, bleak view from her window seat, watching while Georgiana and Eliza went out for pony rides or to work fastidiously at little garden patches or take their dolls for walks. She remembered pressing her face up against the glass to better observe them, and the way her breath would cloud her view and obscure the outside world still further. Always she was kept apart, always she was separate. Thornfield would have been a veritable paradise in comparison, a sanctuary as enchanting as the far-away scenes described in the books she had cherished.

"If only it could be so again." Once more she spoke without thinking, still straddling the boundary between the world of memory and the present one. As soon as the words were out of her mouth she longed to reclaim them, but he did not reprimand her foolishness for wishing back what could never be. He put his hand on hers, turned it over, held it palm-up in his.

"My Jane, how much I wish I could give you. Were it in my power, the sun – the moon and stars would all be yours." She smiled.

"And what should I do with those? Nay, so long as I have your heart I can never want for more."

"Oh it is yours, Janet – it is yours!" And he pressed his lips again and again into her empty hand, to the pale, blue-veined underside of her wrist, and then she drew him against her heart and held him there. _Her Edward_. She smoothed back the shaggy black hair from his forehead and let her fingers linger, caressing his beloved face. _He_ was not lost to her. He had been once, but those days were long over now.

"You shan't touch it, shall you?" She asked at last.

"Thornfield?"

"Yes."

"No."

"I thought as much."

"And do you approve? Or do you desire that I should act differently? You know I would do anything to secure your happiness."

"Of course I approve. Of course."

"To rebuild the hall… it does not seem the right thing to do, somehow…"

"I know."

She understood him instinctively. To rebuild Thornfield would be to grasp rather too desperately at what had passed. They had a home. They had a place for their happiness. They had been wrong, she knew, in trying to forget Thornfield, to deny the heartache, the loss that it embodied. She understood now that their present bliss was contingent on that pain, and that to deny the past was to deny what was a part of themselves. And even had they tried – as they had done – it would never truly leave them. Thornfield was everywhere: around them, in them. It was part of the shadows as well as the light. It was in the dew-stained roses, in the moths that came out in the evening, in the nightingale's song.

Much had changed. Much was lost, and not all of it regained. There were things in the past they had knowingly buried – painful things: cruelties and deceptions inflicted consciously and unconsciously, some forgiven, some not. But the truth in the words he had spoken to her here, that night in the moonlight, had remained steadfast, his devotion to her unchanged and unchangeable.

_It is you – you, Jane – that I love…as my own flesh. As God is my witness, there is love in my heart and constancy in my resolves. I have found you, cold and comfortless – I will solace you. I have found you, friendless and alone – I will guard and cherish you. I know you will make my happiness – let me make yours._

And here he was in her arms, making her happiness now just by looking at her – _looking_ at her – with the sunlight that could once more penetrate his eye brightening his whole face. Oh the miracle of it! For every end there was a beginning.

There was darkness here, yes, but there had been joy also, and there would be again. It had already begun.


	4. The Return Part 3: Epilogue

Morris never forgot the sight that had met him as he'd come upon them that afternoon in the field: the two of them sitting there upon that peaceful little mound where the old chestnut tree had once stood, the tiny young woman holding her great bear of a husband as if he were all she cared for in the world. And perhaps it was indeed so, for in that moment their world seemed to consist only of each other.

They were neither of them beautiful: his swarthy, scarred employer more resembled a highwayman than a gentleman, and Mrs. Rochester, for all her youth, was not handsome. But Morris saw in them a strange loveliness, a strange purity in their intimate embrace. What he had witnessed impressed itself upon him with an indescribable poignancy: he felt he had glimpsed something so rare, so exquisite, that it was beyond mere beauty, beyond the reach of language to explain.

He had felt afraid for them – had feared the consequences of a rash eagerness to rebuild, his mind conjuring fanciful images of Mrs. Rochester imprisoned in a stone tower surrounded by a forest of thorns – had feared the darkness would prove too much for them. What he'd seen that afternoon showed him he needn't have feared at all. Over that love, that constancy, darkness could have no hold.

It had been a day of revelation, a day full of moments that would be remembered and turned-over in years to come, of which that crowning sight was only one. He had met in the morning with Rochester to confer once more about the future of the hall, but no sooner had they approached the battered façade than his employer launched headlong into monologue.

"We have convened for further discussion, I know – that was after all our agreement of yesterday, was it not? Yet I have reflected, and I believe I require no more advice on technicalities or prices or estimates. Instead, I ask only your patience as I present an altogether different case to you. I have in the past made errors, Morris – grievous errors. I have acted in defiance of immutable laws, made declarations on false pretences. I have since been judged, and as you see that judgment left its marks upon me. You know, perhaps, that I lost my sight when Thornfield burned? It has since, by some divine grace, returned in my right eye, but I believed, at my first stunned awakening to the reality of perpetual darkness, that no judgment could have been harsher. I have since come to comprehend that none could have been more just. I know now, know it as verily as I know fire is hot and human bigotry cold, that it was only through these losses – my home destroyed, my sight obliterated – that I could have Jane for my wife. You wonder why I tell you this? You do – you flush like a schoolboy! I learnt at college of the theory of cause and effect. I see you are familiar with it. The almighty saw to it that I should suffer great losses, and in losing gain that which I most desired. Thornfield burned. I was struck a mighty blow. I passed through a darkness, both corporeal and of the soul, that I would wish on no other man. And then, after that time of nearly unbearable reckoning, I was blessed with a creature of such purity, such goodness, capable of utter forgiveness, and possessed of an inner light I have found in no other being."

"Your wife." It was not a question.

"Yes. My wife." He reiterated the words in a tone that was almost reverential. "And now Morris, setting aside for the moment all talk of base logistics, of multitudinous tons of stone and timber, of hours of labor, I ask you, is it _right_ that I, having at last grasped and acknowledged this heavenly logic – the logic, truly, of a higher Intelligence who sees far more clearly than man – is it right that I should now build up, stone by stone, a structure of defiance upon the very altar of my regeneration?"

And Morris had stood silent for several moments, just looking at Rochester and feeling that here, at last, was a man he understood, a man whose mind operated on the same plane as his own. He could not have explained his thoughts in anything approaching his employer's eloquence, but he felt that they two were bound – not employer to employee but man to man – in this shared comprehension of Thornfield. At college he had read of the great cities of the ancients, invaded, sacked and burned, then rebuilt only to suffer the same fate, generation after generation. He had been fascinated by these people, who persevered – recklessly, foolishly even – and whose fierce pride almost ennobled the futility of their actions. The Rochesters, rumor had it, had been a proud and fierce family in their time, but in their last descendant these qualities had been refined and distilled into, if not virtues, at least admirable attributes. His employer was no fool, and Morris hadn't been able to help but praise the self-possession in Rochester's voice as he had recounted the tale of his divine punishments, and he marveled at this coexistence of pride and humility. He recalled the reverence with which he'd spoken of his wife, and the fierce, tenacious affection it betrayed. Rochester was not a man to act at the expense of his wife's happiness – no, nor of his own redeemed soul – and perhaps it was this realization that at last solidified Morris's respect and trust.

He had not ceased, since first beholding her in the drawing room at Ferndean, to think of young Jane Rochester – her small, slender figure and shining face haunted him as surely as if she had been a true fairy. But he understood she was not a creature for such men as he, even had she been unmarried. She was the sort to be admired and worshipped from a distance, not to possess bodily. And prior to receiving the unexpected confidence his employer had seen fit to bestow on him, Morris would have included him in this corporeal exclusion from what he saw as the true embodiment of female virtue – and charm. But Rochester's confession of sins committed, of suffering and redemption and at the last, his heaven-sent union, had moved him greatly. His sense that rejecting the finality of Thornfield's destruction would be nearly akin to rejecting both his penance and his reward, displayed, to Morris, a sensitivity that proved his worthiness of such a wife.

"To speak plainly, sir, I should say no. Your own conscience must govern you in your decision, but as you've put the question to me, I must answer as truthfully as I am sure you asked."

"And you answer in the negative?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Morris – for your honesty and your discretion. I shall, on your advice, let the sleeping dog lie."

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"The house, Morris. It is ended. The matter rests."

Morris had mentioned nothing of the peculiar confession, nor of his employer's unexpected solicitation of his opinion regarding the hall, to his father, but kept them to himself to ponder at his own leisure. Old Mr. Morris had been much flattered by Rochester's visit and after that gentleman left and he was alone with his son, he remarked,

"How good it was of Mr. Edward to come here! But then he always was a good master, and a thoughtful and attentive man."

"I am sure his coming to see you was quite deserved, Father. You served Mr. Rochester and his father faithfully all your life."

"I did no more than any honest steward would. There is nothing but honor to be found in good, faithful service, lad. Never forget that."

"No indeed, Father."

"It is a true shame about his injuries! I suppose he cannot ride, now. Such an avid horseman he was! I remember often encountering him as a boy, when he'd been riding around the estate and the color was high in his cheeks. He never was a handsome lad but he did look a mighty fine figure on horseback, I'll give him that."

"He is quite independent, Father, and I daresay still capable. He gave me to understand that his sight returned only lately, yet he has been quite determined to transact all the business without aid. I should not pity him. He is gone on alone to meet his wife at the hall."

"I see."

"They are to return to Ferndean and shall depart within the hour, I believe. I have promised to see them off, but I shall come back afterwards and sit with you."

"Don't you fret about me – you go on and do your duty and bid them farewell."

Morris had prodded at the coals till the fire leaped up again, made sure his father's arm chair was neither too close nor too far from the blaze, arranged the blanket around his shoulders, then retreated to the hall. As he pulled on his coat and took his hat and gloves from the stand by the door, his father's voice, rather thin and sadly hoarse, called out,

"You know, of course, Roger, who she is?"

"Who, Father?"

"Mr. Edward's wife."

Morris frowned, wondering at this sudden turn in the conversation, and stepped back into the parlor and went up to his father's chair.

"Well I have seen her, but I suppose I know very little of her but that she is quite a small person and very young – and very charming." His father laughed.

"Why Roger!" Morris flushed immediately, regretting his blunder and the fact that he'd now given his father a reason to tease him. Then he flushed more at the thought of still feeling vulnerable to teasing at his age.

"You recall, perhaps, that Mr. Edward had a ward from the continent – a little girl from France, I believe – who lived at Thornfield about a year?"

"Yes, you did mention it – in a letter, if I'm not mistaken. I never saw the child."

"The present Mrs. Rochester was the governess."

He had heard from his father a spare history – garnered from village gossip and second-hand stories from former servants – of young Mrs. Rochester: a poor governess, completely alone in the world, relegated by misfortune to a life in the shadows, neither within society nor without. He had listened with awe as his father related the scandal of the engagement, the greater scandal of the interrupted wedding, the subsequent flight of the girl and the savage, bitter disappointment of the master. He heard the tale out, never breathing a word of the complementary tale he'd heard earlier that same morning when, standing in the shadow of the great house's skeletal, scorched walls, he had glimpsed into the soul of Edward Rochester and found it deserving.

And now, standing there at the end of the laurel walk, half-concealed by the full, overgrown bushes, witnessing the conjugal embrace that was the end of all that adversity, all that pain, Roger Morris, in a rare moment of utter conviction, knew he had indeed found his calling. He had inherited the position of steward for the Rochesters from his father much as any son might be handed the mantle of a family trade and be expected to wear it obediently and with a sense of honor. But now, knowing what he knew, he felt the addition of a new layer – that not only of steward to the family's property, but to the family itself. He wrapped it close about him and claimed it at once for his own. In his head he swore a silent oath: He, twenty three years old, only child to a long-widowed, devoted and hard-working father, would serve and protect this family until the day his energy and faculties failed him.

The years passed, and Morris never wavered in this resolve or the faithfulness of its execution. Thornfield Hall remained, in accordance with Rochester's decision, untouched, and inevitably the storms of winter beat and at last tumbled the fragile walls, returning the timber and stone to the earth from which they'd first been taken, so many centuries before. On his weekly visits to the estate, it became not unusual for him to find young men or, on occasion, ladies, occupied in sketching the ruin, always in highly romanticized depictions, with storm-tossed skies and foregrounds made of strong dark strokes. The frequent presence of the gardeners saw to it that fewer aspiring artists wandered into the gardens, which, also in accordance with orders, were carefully maintained. In contrast to the neglected house, the old orchard trees continued to flourish, flowering dutifully every spring, and every spring and summer the family at Ferndean returned to Thornfield to sit among them, to inhale the fragrance of the still-blooming flowers whose delicacy of appearance belied their hardiness. They had survived calamity and abandonment – with care, they would delight the family for many years to come. There was in that garden something that, Morris believed, the family could not capture and transplant to their wooded home – some essence that belonged at Thornfield and would thrive nowhere else.

In the spring following that first return, Morris received a letter requesting him to obtain a young chestnut sapling to be planted in honor of the birth of Adam Eyre Rochester, come into this world on the 21st of March in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Forty Four. The same letter cordially invited him to be present at the ceremony, which was to take place in late April.

His own son was born in the following year, christened Gabriel after his father, whose passing in the winter of Forty Three had compelled young Morris to take in a lodger to afford the rent. He had contacted a friend of his from college, Walter Stellwood, who took up lodging with him only weeks before young Master Adam's birth. Miss Millie Stellwood, his sister, was a frequent visitor. Though she was no Mrs. Rochester, Morris found in Millie an intelligence and wit tempered by a sharp practicality which balanced his own Romantic tendencies perfectly. It took neither of them very long to recognize how well-suited they were, and in the autumn, after a short courtship, they married.

Morris knew that Millie often wondered about his attachment to his employer's family, and sometimes regretted he could not explain to her his sense of his father's legacy, or the conviction of his calling that had seized them that August day. She would not have understood his devotion. But perhaps, after all, he did not need to explain. She had accepted him, with his idealism and awkwardness and other freaks of character, and despite their eccentricities, she accepted – and respected – the family he served with such unwavering loyalty. And there were days – when the three Rochesters returned to picnic in the orchard and the three Morris's joined them and they all took tea under the sparse shade of the young chestnut tree, when the sight of the two little boys chasing each other around and around its narrow trunk, laughter ringing from their mouths and their faces shining with glee, filled Morris with hope. On these occasions he believed that there might indeed come a day, when all dark and sorrowful memories had at last washed away with time, when rumors and scandals had vanished to oblivion, when a young Mr. Rochester would come to a young Mr. Morris with a certain request for advice. And stone by stone, Thornfield Hall would rise again, as from the ashes, to reign proud once more over the fertile earth.


	5. Addendum to a Return

Fragment of a letter to Diana and Mary, written on the evening of Morris's first visit to Ferndean.

_It has been a glorious summer: the sort of summer that one looks back on from a distance of many years and thinks, how sweet life was then!_

_First, the long-anticipated end of the renovations on our home. The old damp, crumbling Ferndean renewed and restored into a sturdy, modernized house where we may pass the years in tolerable comfort. Unforgettable too the sight of the expanse of lawn in front of the house, where a certain few of the crowding trees have been removed to admit more light in the house and deter the encroaching damp born of the surrounding wood. For a house never intended for constant occupation, I believe Ferndean has withstood the alterations well, and when the new fruit trees in the back grow a bit larger, and all the flowers in the new beds and borders around the circumference of the house come into their own, I doubt there will be a finer home in all of England. _

_Add to these domestic comforts the unanticipated joy of Edward's returned sight, and perhaps you will be able to conceive of the bliss that has been mine this summer. Nearly two months have passed since that evening when he first – and again – beheld my face, and yet I still, while engaged in some ordinary task, catch his gaze fixed on me, see the childlike wonder in his eye. He looks at everything as though discovering it for the first time, as a man who had passed all his life beneath the ground might look upon first beholding the sunlit world above._

_I cannot but feel foolish when I recall with what trepidation my thoughts greeted the idea of his returned sight. It seemed to me, in those first miraculous days of his _seeing_, that our meridian of intimacy, our mutual closeness of confidence, was passed and could only decline. I imagined that he should wish to spend more time alone, that he would resume his rightful position of Master and that I, who for four and twenty months had acted for all intents and purposes as both Master and Mistress, should assume the humbler station of Wife. He has, it is true, reassumed some of his responsibilities, and his indomitable independence of spirit has reasserted itself. Yet it is not – and he swears shall never be – a spirit independent of _me_. And after all, how can it be, when there is no issue of independence – no, nor of dependence neither – between us? We, who are knit so strongly, so inextricably together – why should anything, any waning or waxing in the eye's ability to perceive light, challenge that Gordian entwining of hearts? It would take more – aye, far more – than Alexander's strength to undo _our_ knot._

_I reproach myself as I write this. I have set down with such certainty – in such dark, robust pen-strokes – the irrevocable – and immutable – nature of our happiness. I have set down and subjected to scorn my own fears. Yet I must now expose another apprehension – one which, I confess, has for me already begun to cloud our hitherto golden summer._

_My dears, he tells me we are to travel to Thornfield tomorrow. Only this morning I entered the drawing room to find my husband in consultation with our estate agent, Mr. Morris. They are to meet again tomorrow, to traverse the grounds and discuss whether there might be prospects in rebuilding the house. I cannot tell what sort of feeling this idea, when expressed, sent through me. It was some amorphous sensation – half hope, half fear. Perhaps I again play the fool unwittingly and shall at some future hour think back on this present confusion with fond disparagement. But I am no fortune-teller to peer into the future and make judgments. I cannot tell how the sight of the place will affect me tomorrow – whether my heart will be greatly saddened as it was before, or whether the happy years that have passed since will render it powerless to inspire any strong emotion within me. Of such matters I know nothing. This I do know, however: one former sorrow will be alleviated, one anxiety melted away. When last I beheld Thornfield I knew not what had befallen the owner. Now his fate is no longer a worry. And I do believe that, when I again approach the old hall tomorrow, I will be able to endure with ease any nostalgia, any vain yearning that may overtake me. So long as he is by my side, I know I will have the strength to bear anything._


End file.
